캐릭터 디자인 IP의 분쟁 예방 및 보호 방법에 관한 연구 : 캐릭터 라이선스 산업을 중심으로

Recently, a wide range of industries have been pursing marketing activities by utilizing character designs. The capability of characters to attract and draw in customers in the market with numerous products and services competing with each other has become a major factor that leads the consumers to choose products and services. Accordingly, the economic ripple effects of the use of the character designs are continuing to increase. However, this also led to the occurrence of problems with intellectual property rights, including unauthorized use of character designs and illegal acquisition of the rights of creators, etc. in order to get a free ride on such effects. Accordingly, this study is aimed at the close examination of the character design industry and proposes the means of preventing and protecting the rights of such character design creators against various risk factors through the trademark act, design protection act, unfair competition prevention act and copyright act. This study will examine effective prevention and protection methods with each of these acts and propose the means of securing copyrights that need to be preceded in order to enable such protection in accordance with the method of utilizing and types of infringement of character design. Therefore, it is anticipated that the results of this study could be utilized in protection of the rights of character design creators and in pursuing building up of a sound character license industry.